Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1887-11-30
THE GOSPEL OF HEALTH
THE WILD OATS DELUSION.

BROOKLYN, November 20th.-The Rev
T. De WittrTalmage, ID, opened the
service at ihe Tabernacle this morning. by
giving out the hymn beginning:
"should coming days be cold and dark,
We need not cease our singing;
That perfect rest naught can modest,
Where golden harps are ringing"
He then explained passage in the Gospel
of St. Matthew, concerning the inferior kind
of salt that was cast out to make walks of,
to be trodden under foot of men. The SUBJ
iect of DR.. Talmage's discourse was: "The
Gospel of HEALTH and his text from Prov
erbs viii, %: ''Till dart strike through his
liver" He said:
There is fashion in sermonics. A COM
paratively small part of the Bible is called
on for texts. Most of the passages of Scrip
ture, when announced at the opening of ser
mons, Immediately divide themselves into
old discussions that we have heard from
boyhood, and the effect oD us is soporifc.-
The auditor guesses at the start just what the
preacher will say, There are very important
chapters and verses that have never been
preached from. Much of my lifetime l am
devoting to unlocking these gold chests and
blasting open these quarries. We talk about
the heart, and preach about the heart, and
sing about the heart, but if you refer to the
physical organ that we call the heart, it has
not half so much to do with spiritual health
or disease, moral exaltation or spiritual de-
preston, as the organ to the consideration
Of which Solomon calls us in the text, when
he describes sin progressing "till dart
strike through his liver"
Solomon's anatomical and Physiological
discoveries were so very great that he was
nearly three thousand years ahead of the
scientists of his day. He, more than one
thousand years before Christ, seemed to
know about the circulation of the blood,
which Harvey discovered sixteen hundred
and nineteen years after Christ, for " hen
Solomon in Ecclesiastes, describing the hu-
man body, speaks Of the pitcher at the foun-
tain, he evidently means the three canals
leading from the heart that receive the blood
like pitchers. When he speaks in Ecclesi-
astes of the silver cord of life, he evidently
means the spinal marrow, about which il
our day Drs. Mayo and Carpenter and Dal
ton, and Flint, and Brown-Sequard have
experimental. Aud Solomon recorded in
the Bible thousands of years before scion
fists discovered it, that in his time the spi-
nal cord relaxed in old age, producing the
tremors of hand or head "Or the silver
cord be loosed."
In the text he reveals the fact that he had
studied that largest gland Of the human
system, the liver, not by the electric light
of the modern dissecting- room, but by the
dim light of a comparatively dark age, and
yet had seen its important function in the
| God built castle of the human body, its
selecting and secreting power, its curious
cells, its elongated, branching tubes, a
divine workmanship in central, and right,
and left lobe, and the hepatic artery through
which God conducts the crimson tides. On
this vital organ is like the eye of God in thai
it never sleeps. Solomon knew of it and
had Ii iced either in vivisection or post
mortem what awful attacks sin and oissipa
tion make upon it, until with the fat o
Almighty God it lids the body and sou
separate, and the one it commands to thu
grave, and the other it sends to the judg
ment. A javelin of retrihution, not glanc
ing off or making slight wound, but plerc
ing it from side to side '"till the dart strike
through thelver." Galen and Hippocrate
ascribe to the liver the most of the worlds
moral depression, and the word melanchol.
means black bile.
l preach to you this morning the gospe
of health. In taking diagnosis of the dis
ease of the soul you must also take tn
diagnosis of the disease of the body. AS
to recognize this, one whole book of tn
New Testament was written by a physician
Luke was doctor, and be disconrses mucl
of physical effects, and he tells of the goo
Samarltan's medication of the wounds b.
pouring in oil and wine, and recognize
hunger as hindrance to hearing the g0s
pei, SO that the five thousand we're fed; an
records the sparse diet of the prodigal ava
from home, and the extinguished eyesigh
of the beggar by the wayside, an
lets us know. of the hemorrhage {
the wounds of the dying Christ an
J the miraculous post-mortem resuscitatiol
And any estimate of the spiritual cond
ton that does not include also a
estimate of the physical condition is incon
plete. When the doorkeeper Of CongreI
fell dead from excessive joy because Blu
3 goyne had surrendered at Saratoga, an
r Philip the Fifth of Spain dropped dead {
the news of his country's defeat in battl
and Cardinal Wolsley expired as result {
Henry the Eighth's anathema, it was d.
monstrated that the body and soul al
Siamese twins, and when you thrill the or
9 with joy or sorrow you thrill the other
e We might as we'll recognize the tremendol
C fact that there are two mighty fortresses
= the human body-the heart aud the live
= the heart the fortress of all the graces; tt
y liver the fortress of all the furies. You ma
Il have the head filed with all intellectualitie
and the ear with all musical appreciation
and the mouth with all eloqaence, and Il
hand with all industries, and the heart wi
r all generosilies, and yet ga dart stril
Q through the liver"
Flrst. let Christian people avoid the m